Introduction
NOTE: The data and findings below are drafts subject to change and
some pieces are still in the QA process.
RACE COUNTS provides a 3D view of racial equity:
PERFORMANCE: How
well people are doing. The higher the circle, the better the
performance.
DISPARITY: How racial groups compare to one another.
The further right the circle, the greater the differences by race.
IMPACT: The total population. The bigger the circle, the larger the
population.
purple counties: Gains at Risk;
Orange counties: Prosperity for
the Few;
Yellow counties:
Struggling to Prosper;
Red counties:
Stuck and Unequal.
Race/Ethnicity Notes
1) “Other” race includes those who identify with a race outside
of the specifically named categories, such as Asian, White, etc.
2)
Race labels for bar charts: The “nh_” prefix signifies that a group is
non-Latinx (excludes Latinx).
3) The “twoormor” group represents
those who identify as Multiracial.
Indicators
Health Care Access Index - UPDATED
- Marin County has the best overall Health Care access but also ranks
as the sixth most disparate county in the state.
- Looking across indicators, Black Californians fare worse than other
groups in 3 out of the 6 indicators for Health Care Access.
- All eight of the counties in the San Joaquin Valley Region have
lower overall performance when it comes to health care access. They are
all in the red or yellow quadrants.
- All nine Bay Area counties have above average rates of overall
health care access, with six out of the nine counties also demonstrating
low rates of racial disparity.
Got Help - UPDATED
Scatterplot
- More populous counties tend to display fairly average measures of
both racial disparity and performance for mental health/substance abuse
help relative to the rest of the counties in California. None of the top
eight most populous counties in the state score outside a +/-1 point
threshold on either index.
- Marin County has the best overall rate for this indicator, but is
the second most disparate county in the state. White residents of Marin
County are over 2 times more likely to get help for mental health and
substance abuse issues than Asian residents.
- Despite have the least racial disparities of any county, Imperial
County displays the worst measures of performance in the state by a
significant margin. The overall rate of mental health/substance abuse
help in the county is more than 13 percentage points lower than the
statewide average.
State Barchart
- Non-Latinx Whites are nearly 1.4 times more likely to get help for
Mental/Emotional or Alchohol/Drug Issues than Non-Latinx Asians.
- Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islanders, Non-Latinx Black, Latinx
Californians, and Non-Latinx Asians all have rates below the state
average.
Lack of Health Insurance - UPDATED
Scatterplot
- Similar to the mental health/substance abuse help indicator, Marin
County has the third highest overall rate of health insurance, but the
second highest racial disparity. Latinx residents of the county are 7x
more likely to be uninsured rate than White residents.
- Sierra County has the highest disparity and third-worst performance
of any county in the state. Over half of its Latinx population is
uninsured – a rate more than 10x higher than its white population.
- Los Angeles County is one of the worst performing counties in the
state in terms of health insurance rates among its population. 9% of all
its residents are uninsured, including 13.2% of its Latinx
residents.
State Barchart
- White residents are about 2 times less likely to be uninsured than
the average Californian.
- Latinx and American Indian/Alaska Native Californians are about 3
times more likely to be uninsured than White residents.
- Californians who identify with a racial group under the category of
“other” are the most likely to be uninsured. Although it is difficult to
know what types of individuals are identifying in this group, it likely
includes many who are Latinx (as “Another Race” includes Latinx for this
indicator) and those with origins in the Middle East and North Africa,
among others.
Life Expectancy - UPDATED
Scatterplot
- Five of the six counties in Southern California have greater than
average racial disparities in life expectancy.
- Every county in the San Joaquin Valley has below average life
expectancy rates.
- Less populous, less urban counties tend to have fewer racial
disparities in life expectancy. Of the 15 least disparate counties in
this measure, none of them are classified as urban and only one is among
the top ten most populous counties in the state.
- The state’s most populous, more urban counties tend to exhibit
greater racial disparities in life expectancy. San Francisco, San
Bernardino, Santa Clara, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Alameda counties
are all among the top 20 for disparity levels in this metric.
State Barchart
- Asians have the highest life expectancy, followed by non-Latinx
White Californians. Non-Latinx Blacks have the lowest life expectancy
rate in the state, six years lower than the average statewide rate.
Low Birthweight - UPDATED
Scatterplot
- There is no data for 17 of the 20 counties in the Northern/Sierra
region for this measure.
- There is also a moderately strong, negative correlation between
population and performance. Higher population counties tend to
experience higher rates of infants with low birthweight. The notable
exception is Orange County, which is the third most populous county in
the state and is firmly in the purple quadrant (higher performance,
lower disparity).
- San Francisco County and Kings County exhibit by far the largest
racial disparities in rates of low birthweight, with Black birth
outcomes notably on the wrong end of these disparities. In SF and Kings
respectively, Black infants are about 3x and 2x more likely to be
underweight than white infants.
- The three counties with the lowest disparity (Imperial, Humboldt,
and Napa) do not have data for Black births. Given the stark disparities
in Black birth outcomes, this is at least one reason why disparity is so
low in those counties.
State Barchart
- Black babies have the significantly highest likelihood of having low
birthweight of any racial group in California. They are 50% more likely
than the group with the next highest rate (American Indians and Alaska
Natives), and more than 2x more likely than the group with the lowest
rate (white Californians).
Usual Source of Care - UPDATED
Scatterplot
- All nine Bay Area counties have above average usual source of care
rates among their populations and six counties are in the purple
Quadrant (Lower Disparity, Higher Performance).
- Counties with larger populations tend to have lower levels of racial
disparity in their usual source of care rates, with none of the 16
counties with 500,000 or more residents appearing in the higher
disparity quadrants (Orange and Red).
State Barchart
- Latinx, Pacific Islander, AIAN, and Asian Californians are less
likely to have a usual source of care than the average Californian.
- Latinx Californians are over nine percentage points less likely to
have a usual source of care than White Californians.
Preventable Hospitalizations
Scatterplot
- The four highest levels of racial disparity in the state, in
Imperial, Amador, Lassen, and Mariposa counties, all represent extremely
values compared to the rest of the state. In the 2nd-4th highest
counties, their small population sizes (>40,000) could help inflate
these measures.
- In Imperial County, by far the most racially disparate county in
this measure, white residents have by far the worst outcomes in
preventable hospitalizations. They are hospitalized at around 5x the
rate of Asian residents and nearly twice the rate of Black and Latinx
residents in the county.
- In many counties, some of the highest rates are for Another Race,
local knowledge will be needed to better understand who makes up this
group in each county.
State Barchart
- The Black preventable hospitalization rate is nearly 5 times higher
than that of the group with the lowest rate, and 2.5 times higher than
even the state average.
- The preventable hospitalization rate for white Californians is about
10% higher than the overall state average and more than 2x higher than
the racial group with the lowest rate. This is the only health metric in
which white residents experience worse outcomes than the state
average.